Working Paper No. 14-40:
Supreme Court Sluggers: James Iredell

Author(s):

Abstract:

The
Supreme Court existed for about a dozen years before John Marshall became Chief
Justice in 1801. Until recently, in some instances quite recently, scholars
tended to neglect those early years and the judges who served on the Court
during them. That is why Supreme Court
Sluggers cards of the early Court are good vehicles for saluting – if only
partially and imperfectly – some great baseball players who also were neglected
until recently (and who suffered treatment worse than neglect in their playing
days). Sluggers cards of the original
pre-Marshall Court – Chief Justice John Jay and Justices John Rutledge, William
Cushing, James Wilson, John Blair, and James Iredell – will be based on negro
league stars who were denied (for most of their careers, at least)
opportunities to play in the major leagues due to race discrimination. The
first Sluggers card of a member of
the founding-era Court – the card featured in this little article – portrays
Justice Iredell in the batting stance of longtime Homestead Grays first baseman
Walter “Buck” Leonard. (The nickname came courtesy of a young sibling who tried
to call him “Buddy” but pronounced it “Bucky,” and it stuck for life as
“Buck.”) On the statistical side, the Iredell card reflects another similarity
between the early Justices and the players on whom their portraits are modeled:
the sources of job performance data are fragmentary (as well as being sometimes
hard to parse), at least compared to those for modern Justices and major
leaguers.